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It was an afternoon chilling winter day, the steps are full of tourists arrived from every part of the world. I came to the museum with my friend to finish my homework on art history. Wandering in different galleries and looking around for the assigned painting, I get bored soon. Suddenly, with my first squint at Flight Into Egypt (1923) by Henry Ossawa Tanner, I fell in love with it. Not knowing if there was any other deep meaning, nor knowing what the story was about, I stood in front of it as if it had taken my soul away.  

Flight Into Egypt is a painting that depicts a biblical story of the holy family entering the city under a silent night. It was composed mainly of two tones of color: the blue of the night and the yellow of the light. Joseph and Mary carrying baby Jesus in her arms are riding on a donkey. Even if there is nobody on the street, their movement is purposefully small, to prevent waking people up. The donkey is almost still while they are close to the building, trying not to gain too much attention by making noise in the middle of the street. Up front, there is a guide holding a lantern, which is the only light source in this painting. The lantern is so bright that the yellowish tone from it pushes the night away. It is so well balanced that the light and the night are divided by a diagonal line, repelling but also blending into each other. On this silent night, it provides the holy family some warmth and hope, so they don’t drown in the silent darkness.

Perhaps, the light that leads the holy family’s way in the darkness is what stops my steps. As stated in Matthew 2:13–14, “13 When they had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. ‘Get up,’ he said, ‘take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.’ 14 So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt." The holy family was running away from where they used to be. Someone is trying to kill baby Jesus and they need to escape. The future is unknown darkness, all they can follow is this light at the night with no friend to accompany them. This darkness merges into my memory, back to the first year I arrived in a brand new country in the seventh grade.  

The first year of adapting to a new environment is always very hard. Even though I got close friends at school, I lost connection with them when school is over every day. I started to miss all my old friends, my old life, and my grandparents back in my own country. I began to drown in the darkness of loneliness and cried for many days. Luckily, something just like the lantern in the dark dispels the darkness for me — it was music. It holds me together in my little room, just like a small lamp at the night, not a strong light, but enough for you to see your steps.

Looking back on the painter’s life, Henry had experienced leaving his own country because of systematic racism there, just like the holy family. This could also be a reason why he painted the same biblical story Flight Into Egypt in many different ways. “That there can never be too much of reality; that the attempt to draw nearer to it — which will not fail — will not fail entirely, as it will give us not the fact of lemons and oysters but this, which is its own fact, its own brave assay toward what is.”(Mark Doty). Unlike Jan Davidsz. de Heem, painter of Still Life with Oysters and Lemon, Henry did not attempt to depict reality through painting realistically and point out the racial issues he experienced. However, it conveys the radical racism he faced by using a symbolic way, with a well-known story from the bible.  

His brush strokes are wild and the color choice reinforces the mood of walking in darkness with only the lantern to light the road of an unknown future in a new country. Instead of using purely black for the night, he uses a blue that brings not just loneliness, but also calm, faith, and sensitivity. This blue matching with a cheerful, optimistic yellow illuminates the whole scene.

Flight Into Egypt gains our attention through the great use of color and composition. Meanwhile, it unites people’s feelings by bringing us into the darkness everyone has once in their lifetime. Maybe it is the downfall in their career, or they get lost on the road to becoming themselves, but there will always be a lantern there, lighting up our way.  

Xiaotong Yi's critical essay won second prize in the Eleventh Annual Humanities & Sciences Undergraduate Writing Contest. Xiaotong is a freshman majoring in Illustration at the School of Visual Arts. She is originally from Guangzhou, China, and moved to the United States in middle school for her education. She wants to become a professional illustrator while exploring other possibilities at the same time.